"Some secrets should never be unearthed..."
A widowed mother and her young daughter move to Hollowville, hoping for a fresh start. But soon after they settle into their new home, the daughter begins to act strangely. She disappears into the nearby f...
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2024, Evergreen Hospital
Alex Reynolds gripped the wheel tightly as his car crawled along the snaking roads to Evergreen Hospital. Mist clung to the winding turns, and the headlights barely pierced the thick fog. It felt like he was journeying through a forgotten land, the last stretch of civilization long behind him. Trees lined the road, looming over him, their twisted branches tangled in the air like outstretched claws.
He checked the directions on his GPS for the third time, his breath hitching each time the system recalculated as if doubting he was on any real road. Evergreen was practically a ghost of a building, that something should have crumbled ages ago but lingered, clinging to existence. According to rumors, the hospital had nearly closed down twice, but it somehow scraped by each time, forgotten by everyone except the desperate, the lost, and the damned.
Alex had traveled all night to reach this place. His editors had long since given up on the story of Hollowville, calling it "a fever dream" and "a bottomless pit." But his curiosity—his relentless drive to find the truth—had overpowered their dismissal. Hollowville had remained silent for ten years, its secrets festering in the shadows. Few survivors, if any, had emerged. And Maddie Anderson, the woman he'd come to see, had only recently started speaking again after a decade of silence. He took a breath, steadied his hand on the steering wheel, then grabbed his notebook. It was worn from years of investigation—a trusted companion filled with scrawled observations, names, dates, and every inexplicable detail he had uncovered about Hollowville and its strange, disappearing inhabitants.
He parked, stepping out into the thick fog that pressed around him like a second skin. The air tasted damp and metallic, carrying the faint scent of rot and wet earth. As he walked up the cracked concrete path, his shoes squelched in the mud, sinking slightly as if the ground was trying to claim him. Evergreen loomed ahead, a crumbling facade with ivy climbing its walls, as though nature had begun its slow reclamation. Vines twisted up the brick walls, their pale green tendrils creeping over every surface, winding around the faded sign above hanging the entrance: Evergreen Hospital. The letters were chipped and worn, like the last breath of something long dead.
The heavy wooden doors were resistant as he pushed them open, groaning with the effort as though they hadn't moved in years. The inside was steeped in darkness, broken only by a few flickering lights casting harsh, irregular shadows across the peeling walls and cracked floor tiles. Dust hung heavy in the air, swirling in his path. It smelled faintly of antiseptic, but more so of decay—a hint of mold that clawed its way into his nostrils, lingering in the back of his throat. At the reception desk, a dusty chair lay overturned, its seat imprinted with the shape of something that hadn't sat there for years. Alex ran his fingers along the dusty countertop, feeling the grit under his nails.
Ahead, a narrow corridor stretched into darkness, lined with empty rooms whose doors hung open like silent, watching eyes. As he moved forward, the silence deepened, heavy and oppressive, with only the faint hum of outdated machinery echoing down the halls. The walls themselves seemed to exhale, whispering memories of forgotten pain and abandonment. Alex's footsteps echoed too loudly, each step a reminder of his intrusion. His footsteps seemed to lead him on their own accord through the hospital's labyrinthine halls, winding past rooms that lay hollowed out, their broken beds and chairs casting bizarre shapes in the gloom. Each step echoed through the hall, punctuated by the faint creak of old pipes and the distant hum of failing lights.
